It's sew far, sew good for Lisa's class venture

Thursday 23 June 2011 09:44 BST

Child's play: Lisa Comfort has turned her teenage obsession into a business

When Lisa Comfort was 16, her parents offered her a trip to New York if she worked hard for her GCSEs. She told them that there was something she wanted even more than to see the Statue of Liberty and to shop on Fifth Avenue: a sewing machine. Twelve years later, sitting in her sewing café in Clapham, Comfort proudly shows me that hard-earned machine.

"I was mercilessly teased about that choice in sixth form," says the 28-year-old, laughing. "But it is a very snazzy machine. I don't regret it for one minute, I've made everything on it."

Now, that teenage obsession has become her business: Comfort opened Sew Over It in Landor Road last month. It offers classes ranging from the basics of sewing and customising clothes to making handbags and Mad Men-style dresses.

The shop also has its own range of make-at-home kits. Customers are mainly women in their twenties and thirties, but Sew Over It also runs classes and parties for children. Comfort hopes to encourage more men to sew too.

Starting a business in a downturn might sound risky but she believes it was perfect timing: "The skill of sewing has largely been lost but the recession revived interest in crafts and made people want something which lasts. Fast fashion is on the way out."

Sew Over It's name is a reference to her frustration at the throwaway attitude to clothing.

"People are sick of wearing things that everyone has, they want something unique," she says. "Customising especially is something so many people can do. You add a motif and completely change a T-shirt, it is that easy."

Comfort learned to sew at nine and was the first student at her Yorkshire comprehensive to get an A star in textiles. But her parents encouraged her to get an academic rather than practical qualification, so she decided to study French and Italian at Leeds University.

"All through my degree, I was making dresses rather than writing essays," she admits, while her year abroad was spent doing tailoring and dressmaking in Italy. After graduating in 2006, she moved to London and worked in recruitment and then marketing in the City: "I absolutely hated it. I did evening classes in embroidery and realised they were the highlight of my week."

So, on the sly, she put together a portfolio and applied to the London College of Fashion - only telling her friends after she was accepted. Her boyfriend's mother then introduced her to Bruce Oldfield, thinking he would be a useful contact.

"We clicked," Comfort recalls. "Bruce offered to be my mentor, gave me work experience and then eventually offered me a job." Feeling she would learn more under his watch than by finishing her degree, Comfort dropped out in 2008, after a year, to become Oldfield's production assistant. A stint with bridalwear designer Phillipa Lepley followed but Comfort's dream was always to run her own business: "I wanted the freedom and a constant challenge - that's never an issue if you're a start-up."

Her first shot at entrepreneurship wasn't exactly a money-maker, though. Aged seven, Comfort set up The Bubble Shop from her bedroom: "I would go to the Body Shop with my pocket money, get a load of soaps, put them in baskets, make them look pretty and then sell them to my friends at half the price I got them for. I had no business sense but I loved it."

While working for Phillipa Lepley, Comfort also travelled around London, teaching customers to sew in their homes.

Inspired by Paris's Sweat Shop café, which launched last year, Comfort decided to open a shop that offered classes "with tea and cake - how English!"

She had a small sum saved, but the money for the shop came largely from raiding her future wedding fund: "My parents had put something aside for a big wedding or a deposit for a flat but I said this is what I wanted to do with it. I am going to be living in a shed, and if I get married, it's going to have to be at Sew Over It."

Takings have so far beaten expectations, and the business is on track for turnover of £100,000 in the first year. Comfort's dream is to open more shops - Bristol and North London would be next on the list - and to expand the company's kits and pattern ranges.

She hasn't yet managed to have a day off: "I am going to a wedding soon, and am going to have to leave the shop. It'll be a bit like leaving a baby for the first time. I'll be calling from the ceremony every half-hour, and asking 'Is everything ok?' My colleague Dominique will probably say: 'Er, yes, we've sold a brownie and a sewing kit'."